Homework
The Communications Team website has some excellent guidelines and pointers for setting up sites – here are some documents to read before you go any further:
- The University’s website regulations – general regulation for all Leeds hosted sites.
- The University’s Web Toolkit guidelines – most of which is applicable to leeds.ac.uk hosted sites using the university theme (see below).
- The University Style guide – some general guidelines on writing for print/web.
- Writing for the web – more general guidelines from the library website.
Pick a domain name
The wordpress service maps a domain to your website, so the first thing to decide is What domain do I want?
leeds.ac.uk sub-domains
Sites where the University is the main partner must normally use a leeds.ac.uk domain and must use the University WordPress theme, or be developed in line with the web toolkit guidelines. We can register a subdomain of leeds.ac.uk (i.e. projectx.leeds.ac.uk) for your site at no cost.
Other domains
Any other domain can be registered through IT – just check the availability of the domain using a domain registration site – godaddy and namecheap are the two largest ones. You may want IT to register more than one domain for you – the .org and the .org.uk for example – to prevent others from using the same name (with a different suffix).
In order for you to use an external domain on your site (e.g. .org), it must be registered by University IT staff. If you register it yourself, then we will not be able to use it.
Theme and plugins
If you use a non-leeds.ac.uk domain for your site, you will need to source a theme (and possibly plugins) for your site – you must not use Leeds branding. Most of the themes on the WordPress.com site can be used – browse through the free themes here. Note that some themes are designed to help with particular types of sites (portfolios, blogs, galleries, etc.), so make sure you choose a theme for its features (as well as for the way it looks).
If you are thinking of commissioning a site from one of the University’s external framework suppliers to use this service, please make sure they are aware of the development guidelines available here:
Fill out the application form
Apply for the site online by filling out the site application form
Alternatively, please contact either Tim Banks or Peter Edwards if you need to discuss anything further.
What Happens Next?
We will contact you when your site has been created, and give you the details you will need to access your wordpress dashboard